Page 42 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

My face is on fire. And even though I'm upset, my body knows he's near, hovering above mine. It's the worst kind of tease. Knowing he's there and I can't have him.

I won't let myself have him.

Not before we circle back around to what he just said. Because I distinctly remember a very hot bite of discomfort, a feeling of burning betrayal—when he told me he shared his partner, his wife, with others.

I hadn’t known then that I was his wife in another life.

Gosh, that’s more than my mind can unpack right now.

“Now, who is lying?” The words come out raw with hurt.

His eyes darken and his jaw hardens, but he says nothing in response. It's when he pushes up from my body that something inside me tugs. It's painful, almost like a tearing.

For a moment, I simply clutch my chest, unable to breathe around the unraveling.

As he walks away from me toward where Alastor stands, I am hit with a cool reality that washes over me like a depthless sea. It smothers every flame that dared to dance inside me.

This man that I love so much—he ismorethan man. More than God. More than beast. More than tormentor.

He is my mate.

He is the other half of me.

I can feel it, the fractures of my soul embedded in the fissures of his.

I can feel him inside me, a webbing of twisted knots and silken vines we can never unspool. I wouldn't want to sever them, but I am rocked by this realization as he turns to lock those dark eyes on mine.

I'm sitting up now. I'm not sure when that happened. I figure it happened when the vicious tug pulled at that thing in my chest. That thing that doesn't belong, and yet it does. Because it'shim, and he ismine.

There is no lust in his eyes now. It has faded into something else. I think maybe it mirrors mine. Fear, shock, uncertainty. He knows what I see, what I feel. He knows, and yet I don't think he has the answers to the questions that are written in my mind, in my eyes.

I am an open book, my soul a scribe of ancient secrets. He is the reader.

I breathe the words, but I know he hears me. “You're my soul mate.”

The shake of his head in answer is devastatingly, heart wrenchingly sad. “It’s not possible, little goddess.”

“You are,” I insist. I know he is. I can feel it.

“Gods and Goddesses do not have soul mates, Persephone.” He bows his head a moment before daring to meet my eyes again. “I’ve not found the answers to what we are yet.”

“But you feel it?” I demand, palming the unseen tear in my chest. “Youfeelit?”

“Yes.” He dips his chin into his chest, and then he dips to lift his jacket from the bed of moss, holding it out for me. “Come. It’s time we meet the others.”

Chapter

Nineteen

Hades

“Demeter wants Hades dead.”Thanatos’ hand slams on the table and his voice rattles as he repeats, “She wants him dead.”

Charon slumps in his seat beside Hecate, pale eyes bored. He is anything but. The man is sharp as a tac and lethal as a poisonous snake.

This is a shit show. It's been a shit show since the moment I walked Persephone through the doors of the Palace. She’d stormed away from me with more fire than she's ever stormed away from me with.

If there was one thing Persephone hadn’t been all those centuries ago, it was a fighter. She’d been a seductress of all who came near her, but when it came to the fire of rage, she simply didn't possess it.

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